Typically, a locksmith will use traditional techniques such as “picking” or “impressioning a lock” in an attempt to open a lock when a key has been lost or becomes unavailable. These techniques, however, can be time-consuming and complex and their success rate is spotty at best. For example, picking requires the use of various tools to roughly simulate the action of a key. It requires lifting or shaking the pins in a lock until it opens. As those skilled in the art recognize, the success of this technique is somewhat left to chance because the locksmith has little or no knowledge of the depth of the pins within the lock. Impressioning is a time consuming and art driven process of creating and then filing impressions/marks that are caused by contact with pins in the lock. It involves applying a great deal of force to create marks on a key blank to indicate the position and depth of the pins in the lock. For example, this technique requires repeated insertion of a blank into a lock, rigorous torquing of the blank up and down when inside the lock to make sure that the pins inside make sufficient impressions on the blank, and then filing the blank until the proper depths and spacing are determined by the impressions left on the blank. Even after the filing is completed, the now impressioned blank may still not open the lock easily because the filing may be too deep, too shallow, have incorrect spacing or a variation of the three. Further, neither picking nor impressioning attempt to decode or “read” the pins in a lock so a locksmith can simply cut a new key using a key cutting code machine.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide novel methods and devices for decoding a lock that overcome the disadvantages of conventional techniques.